The budget will be debated on March 23rd and 24th - but before that we have a little preview in the leader of the opposition's off the cuff reaction to the budget. He told the press today that it is bogus:...

Hon. John Briceno, Leader of the Opposition"This government claims that they like to boast that they are a pro-poor government and I think I want to agree with him that they are pro-poor government, because they are keeping people poor. Every year they spend more than a billion dollars in their budget, yet the numbers of poverty continues to go up and there is nothing in this budget, no specific projects that can show you how they are going to reduce poverty in this country - the Barrow bogus budget. If you were to take a second and think about it, he is now talking that he is going to have a primary surplus of 115 million dollars. That's a turnaround from this year of 211.5 million dollars. So now he has never had a primary surplus for the past 5 years or certainly never had more than 2%. Now in an economy that's contracting, he is going to have a primary surplus of 3.1%. The same thing goes to his overall deficits that now all of a sudden he is going to have no more deficits. In his overall he is going to have a surplus of 6.6 million. Again, that's a turnaround of about 167 million dollars. He is talking about what planet who's living. I think we need to find out what planet the Prime Minister is living in. But from all accounts he does not care, because when they have to come back with supplementary budgets later on during the course of the new financial year, he is not going to be around. That's going to be somebody's problem."